Just like everyone else who racked up lots of loans when the banks were giving cash with almost no strings attached, big media have a debt hangover. Clear Channel, whose private equity owners took on $17 billion in debt to acquire it last year, is getting hammered by investors who think it won’t be able to pay that money back. Next up for scrutiny: CBS, which has a big debt payment due next year and not that much cash on hand.

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The steady drumbeat of bad news from the ad market doesn’t always sound the same: Today, for instance, one survey of financial Web sites estimates that revenues are down by as much as 30 percent this quarter. But Gawker’s Nick Denton says his sites are up 10 percent.

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Gawker Media’s Nick Denton continues to shrink his blog empire: He has sold off Consumerist.com to Consumers Union, the nonprofit that publishes Consumer Reports. And he is in talks to sell Defamer.com.

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What if Apple had made the first iPhone in 1983? What if you could turn a Nintendo controller into a bong? What would a 103-inch TV look like? Theoretical questions no longer. At least for people who visit New York’s Lower East Side for the next few days. That’s where Gizmodo, Gawker Media’s crazily successful gadget blog, has set up a gallery of odd, cool, and awesome stuff.

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FiLife, the personal finance site co-owned IAC and Dow Jones, has a new boss. The company has brought in Ezra Kucharz, formerly an executive at online games company Oberon Media and at NBC’s iVillage, as president. He replaces Dave Kansas, a business news veteran. Kansas will stay on as an editor-at-large.

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On the same day Gawker Media’s Nick Denton makes a splash with dire pronouncements about the future of media, he is also doing some internal reshuffling: Right-hand man Noah Robischon is moving on to Mansueto Ventures, where he will oversee Web operations for what the company is calling “Fast Company Media.”

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Gawker Media’s Nick Denton says publishers are still underestimating the coming ad collapse. Don’t believe him? Then look at the data from Jupiter Media–yet another online publisher who saw its business tank in the last quarter.

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A year ago, the conventional wisdom said that the online ad market would still grow in an economic slump because online ads were cheaper, and more effective. And they are. But if the slump is big enough–like the one we’re in now–then all bets are off. Which is why there’s no longer any conventional wisdom about the future of online ads. J.P. Morgan analyst Imran Khan, for instance, thinks growth will slow next year, and has just reduced his estimates. But Gawker publisher Nick Denton thinks we’ll be lucky if there’s any growth, period.

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